Max Caulfield (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mypartnerintime) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
entrancelogs2017-02-03 08:18 pm
mypartnerintime) wrote in entrancelogs2017-02-03 08:18 pm
Entry tags:
The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won't exist.
Who: Max Caulfield and Tim Wright
Where: Tim's room (6th floor, room 19)
When: Feb 3
Rating: Heck I dunno PG?
Summary: Chloe's gone.
The Story:
She woke up cold and-
The morning light poured in through the-
Chloe was gone.
The rest of the details don't really matter.
For a few days she didn't bother telling anyone. Who would she tell, anyway? Chloe's friends were hardly hers. And Chloe didn't even have very many friends.
But at some point, being alone in her room and doing nothing... just lost its appeal. She needed to do something, anything, if only to stop the deafening silence of her room and the insistent blankness of her thoughts, that threatened over and over to slip into darker places.
And the ability of her own mind to come up with distressing images and words scared her.
Like how she would think about the uselessness of it all, of Chloe coming and going, and leaving her alone again- that it wasn't even some malicious plot on Wonderland's part, but that life was just fucking random and terrifying.
That nobody was out to get her. There was no deeper destiny or fate to everything that had happened. That Chloe dying was just some meaningless accident, a blip in the grand scheme of things, and that nobody fucking cared about any of it, because why would they?
People come and go from Wonderland. Eventually everyone forgets.
She could rewind and rewind and rewind, and people would die, and it wouldn't matter. Who would remember by the time everyone went home? Or ended up like Alice?
Today is just another timeline, with no real permanence, and no real point.
A new reality is only a rewind away.
No, no, she can't think like that. That's the start of a bad habit, a dangerous routine, and this time there's no living Chloe to snap her back into this reality, and gratefulness for the things she has... Even if it's only by turning over in the middle of the night to wrap her arm around her best friend, and to know that she's alive.
Still, it's comforting to think that life might get worse and worse, and her pain might grow, but in the end none of it matters. And she doesn't have to care.
So to keep herself from going stir crazy in the emptiness of her room, in the emptiness of the room across the hall, where she'd hung an "occupied" sign like some dumb hopeful fucking child, she jerks herself out of bed and several floors up to Tim's room. Because she loathes Tim, and loathing seems like an appropriate emotion, and he seems like a fucking messed-up sort of guy.
She knocks on his door, looking worn and generally unkempt, eyes downcast and unfocused.
Where: Tim's room (6th floor, room 19)
When: Feb 3
Rating: Heck I dunno PG?
Summary: Chloe's gone.
The Story:
She woke up cold and-
The morning light poured in through the-
Chloe was gone.
The rest of the details don't really matter.
For a few days she didn't bother telling anyone. Who would she tell, anyway? Chloe's friends were hardly hers. And Chloe didn't even have very many friends.
But at some point, being alone in her room and doing nothing... just lost its appeal. She needed to do something, anything, if only to stop the deafening silence of her room and the insistent blankness of her thoughts, that threatened over and over to slip into darker places.
And the ability of her own mind to come up with distressing images and words scared her.
Like how she would think about the uselessness of it all, of Chloe coming and going, and leaving her alone again- that it wasn't even some malicious plot on Wonderland's part, but that life was just fucking random and terrifying.
That nobody was out to get her. There was no deeper destiny or fate to everything that had happened. That Chloe dying was just some meaningless accident, a blip in the grand scheme of things, and that nobody fucking cared about any of it, because why would they?
People come and go from Wonderland. Eventually everyone forgets.
She could rewind and rewind and rewind, and people would die, and it wouldn't matter. Who would remember by the time everyone went home? Or ended up like Alice?
Today is just another timeline, with no real permanence, and no real point.
A new reality is only a rewind away.
No, no, she can't think like that. That's the start of a bad habit, a dangerous routine, and this time there's no living Chloe to snap her back into this reality, and gratefulness for the things she has... Even if it's only by turning over in the middle of the night to wrap her arm around her best friend, and to know that she's alive.
Still, it's comforting to think that life might get worse and worse, and her pain might grow, but in the end none of it matters. And she doesn't have to care.
So to keep herself from going stir crazy in the emptiness of her room, in the emptiness of the room across the hall, where she'd hung an "occupied" sign like some dumb hopeful fucking child, she jerks herself out of bed and several floors up to Tim's room. Because she loathes Tim, and loathing seems like an appropriate emotion, and he seems like a fucking messed-up sort of guy.
She knocks on his door, looking worn and generally unkempt, eyes downcast and unfocused.
no subject
Probably neither of them. All she knows for certain is what she saw on that tape.
...Unless that was fake, too. It all makes her head hurt. Or maybe that's just the rewinds. Or maybe there's no real reason for it.
"Is he the one who told you about the rewinds?" she asks, casually, but there's a sharp undercurrent to her voice that smooths over all her usual pauses and stammers.
She brings the cigarette up to her lips, finally, to keep from looking at Tim. It's about time to actually try it. But she inhales too quickly, trying to hide her...
...whatever the hell all these emotions are.
Smoke floods her throat and makes her gag. She coughs, lightly at first, then harder as she fails to pass it over gracefully.
no subject
He's right, anyway.
The question jabs at him with an unfair weight and poise, and he shoots a look at her from beneath furrowed brows, the reaction for the moment slipping outside the typical muted spectrum he operates on. How'd she -
Unless she already figured it out, and then spun things back?
He decides in that moment that he hates time travel, purely on principle. He can't even glean any amusement from seeing her try and smoke awkwardly, for the first time, his jaw clenching.
"No," he says, drawing the word out slowly. "You did. In that...winter...Wonderland dream."
no subject
But the action is slow, not the harsh swipe of someone who's frustrated or angry- rather the surreptitious motions of someone who's tired. Resigned.
She doesn't notice his look. Doesn't pick up on how it bothers him. She can only tell, distantly, that he might be annoyed. Between the mirror talk and the unexpected social call from Max, she doesn't blame him.
He probably doesn't like her. She sees the feeling as general and not specific to her power.
She nods first in understanding of his words. Winter-Wonderland. "...It's a secret," she finally mumbles, head bowed. People don't like her power. They probably don't like her, too.
no subject
He closes two fingertips around the cigarette between his lips and exhales, slowly.
"I figured."
The words are quiet.
"Don't worry about it. Not like I've got a ton of friends to spill secrets to."
no subject
He agreed. He's a liar, but... but at least he sort of bothered to agree.
She doesn't even know how much of a liar he is. If at all.
She inhales again, once more holding the cigarette up to her mouth. It makes her lips hot as she pulls on it, dragging smoke into her mouth, and this time she does it slowly, holding it then letting it out in a long, shaky breath.
She coughs. Can't seem to stop crying. Doesn't know what else to say.
What did she expect, anyway?
"You can- you can g- go, you know. You don't have to... stay." She passes off her stammers as wheezing from the smoke as she keeps her tearful eyes averted. It doesn't do much good.
no subject
Aside from Chloe. But that's another button now, another issue he can't and won't press.
"And leave you standing alone on the roof?" He drops his stare to lean out over the edge, eyeing the long, long drop. That's the first place he ended up upon his arrival, the moment he had the ability to choose.
He placed himself on the roof, looking out and over. Because it was easiest.
He hums his dissent, shaking his head. "Don't think so."
cw for thoughts regarding suicide, I think...
"You- you think I'm going to-"
Memories of Blackwell's roof, rain falling gently and mingling with Kate's tears as she stood with her heels sticking out over the edge. Max, powerless, reaching desperately for the right words- the honest words- that would bring Kate back toward her, that would be the difference between a shaky hug and a long fall.
She gawks at Tim.
Does he- does he see her like that now, cigarette in her hand, the smoke curling its way into her lungs- a long, secretive self-destruction? Or maybe faster, a sprint and leap with eyes closed... and a fall...
Max saved Kate. It seems so long ago- but no, it never happened, it was a different timeline. Not the one that mattered. Not the one that stuck.
Not this one.
She continues to stare, at a loss for words. To think that one day things would get so bad, that someone would feel the need to say those words. Someone like Tim, who she doubts would normally even care.
And to not know what to say in response, because none of the answers seem quite right.
cw continues lol
She stares at him with her mouth hanging open, and he regrets every implication he just dropped in her lap. Is there even a remote chance of worming his way outta this one without explanation?
Hell no. She's going to want something. Or - maybe she'll just rewind her way back to the conversation's beginning until she gets what she wants. If she's feeling up to it, anyway. Who can say.
"Wouldn't blame you." And that's - that's definitely morbid as hell, way more than he has any right being in front of someone who's already lost someone. "I mean, you're already killing yourself, right?"
He gestures with the cigarette held between two fingers, at the smoke curling its way into her lungs.
Smoking's just a slower means to a more permanent end.
cw continues further!
The truth is that she never even thought about it. About... that, about following Chloe. But now that he's thrown the idea out there and it's floating around above everything... now she's too scared to think about it, wondering if he could have possibly seen some sort of... of tendency or potential in her.
Or if, given enough time, she would reach the same conclusion. Worse, if, somehow, without her knowledge, she already has- if some deep down part of her had convinced her to come up here, convinced her to smoke.
Chloe would be so pissed, a voice chides in her mind, as Max falls into a fit of coughs.
Following Chloe. That would be- no, it wouldn't be funny, but it would be kind of moronic and cringe-worthy. A bad reunion. But a reunion.
"That's... not why I do it," she eventually replies, but she sounds unsure. "Is that- I mean, you do it." She glances at him, curious now, as she wipes away the streaks of tears on her cheeks.
no subject
Or the sort that plagues a guy like him, with preexisting respiratory issues and no means to improve them. Might as well crash and burn everything he is with spectacular efficiency, right?
"Yeah, except I'm a walking advertisement for bad choices," he says, just dry enough for it to be construed as humorous. As if to prove it, he takes another long drag, and the itch in his throat elicits a stutter of coughing almost immediately after.
no subject
But that's not the scariest bit. The scariest is that some choices are made completely alone. No one to ask, no one to tell. No one to convince you that saving Chloe is the bad choice, and saving Arcadia is the good one.
You have to figure that one out on your own. You have to imagine where you'll end up, a year later- a cigarette in your hand.
"Do- do they help?" she asks, to help swallow down the rising lump in her throat. "The bad choices? Do they... help you with... wh- whatever it is you're going through?" She's not sure if it's a dumb question, halfway between prying and keeping your distance. But it feels right.
no subject
Do the bad choices help?
"Make me feel like shit," he concedes at last, contemplating the cigarette as it burns slowly between his fingertips. "But I feel like shit anyway. So I get to decide how much I feel like shit and when. Or I can pretend to."
He lifts one shoulder in a partial shrug and sucks in another long drag.
"Don't be me." That'd be his cue to laugh, if he were the type for it. He's not. "That's about the worst choice you can make."
no subject
This old hurt starts to rise now. The old feeling of being left behind by Alex, of being powerless to help him... watching him sort of... let go.
"I mean he... kinda didn't like himself. And things just got worse and worse. At some point he hardly even... talked to me. I c-couldn't help him, then... he was gone."
She looks up at Tim, kind of stupidly. Unsure. "He was a great friend. I wish I'd... done better."
Alex. Then Chloe. Supposedly Max's closest friends. And nothing Max ever did made a difference. Both of them went home to... whatever ending. Gone.
She pulls her knees up and rests her forehead against them, hiding her face.
no subject
She does it hesitantly, and nervously, and his shoulders tighten accordingly, wishing he could drive a skewer through every remotely nice thing she has to say about him. But what kinda guy would that make him? Alex didn't start out the way he did. He only got to be more dangerous than a vaguely pretentious jerk of a director once he met Tim, once Tim's polluting influence burned anything pleasant and personalbe about of him.
For a long moment, he doesn't say anything.
He can't contest that. Alex was the same way. He told him, he told him - his last ragged, desperate words as he bled out on the school floor, were about he had to kill anyone left - and then himself.
He wasn't just dying. He was passing the torch. He always intended to die.
"It wasn't your fault," he says heavily, finally. He can't get into the details, of course he can't. Not when there still might be a chance that It won't trail her mind and burn a hole in her memories. "He ran into some...trouble back home. Trouble that changed him."
He'd offered to fix it. Offered to help. He could've shown him how. He could've made things better, just to have someone else there.
"I wish I'd..."
Wish I'd done better. Only he couldn't, huh? Literally incapable, in every way and shape and form.
"I wish things hadn't gone the way they did."
no subject
Tim's mention of things happening back home, of Alex changing, elicits a nod from Max as she tries the cigarette again. Her knowledge of their entire situation is blurry at best, but each conversation brings the picture into slightly sharper focus. She knows now that some sort of monster is involved. If monster is even the right word. But it's more than just an idea, a phantom. It actually... visits people.
And though Tim says it's not Max's fault, she really does believe she could have done something to help Alex. It's what friends do, right?
"Yeah," she says, her expression hardening. "Me too." She knows that Alex would be better off in Wonderland. Like Chloe.
Not dead from a gunshot.
Don't go there...
"What... Do you know what happens to him? Back home..? Does he... he doesn't come out okay, does he?"
no subject
He doesn't come out okay, does he?
Because he thinks of Alex, he thinks of Seth, distorted screams rebounding off the walls of an abandoned warehouse. Of Sarah, and of Amy, who must have died not even knowing why he was killing them. Of Brian, gaunt and lifeless and splayed on the floor like a broken marionette. Of Jay desperately holding himself together with dribbles of scarlet drooling out between his fingers, his breath high and thin and terrified as he saw the thing that would kill him looming out from the shadows.
Of Alex, a point in his throat, blood gurgling on the floor in a fount of red.
He doesn't come out okay, does he?
Quiet words, ragged words, and even with the guilt coiled tightly around his gut, he knows, full well, what an error it would be to tell her the details of what transpired.
"None of us did."
no subject
You have to imagine where you'll end up, a year later- a cigarette in your hand.
Her stare withers, giving way to a downcast, defeated glare. She puts her own cigarette to her mouth, and takes a drag before driving it into the ground, stamping out the glowing embers at the end.
She actually manages to exhale some smoke without coughing this time.
"Chloe too," she says. And, like Tim, she doesn't explain- doesn't tell him how that ending saves everyone else, saves Arcadia Bay. How it kills Max, deep down.
And for a moment- just one moment- she sees why he was worried about leaving her on the roof.
"I'm... sorry things turned out badly. I know it- it doesn't mean much. I don't even know what happened." She's sorry for his sake, but for Alex's too. She still misses him, sometimes. Still worries about him.
She stands up, dusting herself off. "And I know it'd be... so dumb if I just went around saying that- that things'll b- be okay." By the time she finishes talking, she's crying gently again, rubbing a sleeve against her eyes vigorously.
no subject
That's a lie, and it tastes bitter in his throat. He swallows it back.
"It's not your fault," he begins, low, nervous, but she's scrubbing at her eyes again and - god, what's he say to that? This is usually the point where someone hugs somebody else, but he's not a guy for hugs and he's pretty sure Max wouldn't appreciate them coming from him, even if he was.
"None of this is your fault. Not Chloe. Not Alex." If it's anyone's - well, he knows whose fault this is. He knows he's the one that brought this hell into everyone's lives. But Wonderland has a way of spinning things out of control, and no one can help that.
Right?
no subject
"Y-you don't know what- what you're talking about," she throws at him, her voice shaky and low. And as she speaks her self-control dissolves more and more, until she's fighting to hold down sobs and pace her breathing.
She could break down. She could sit on the ground here, wrap her arms around her legs, huddle together and cry, her whole body wracked in ugly, coarse sobs. Even if she's tired of crying, physically tired, drained. Even if he's standing right there watching her. Because she could just rewind it all away, anyway.
Or you could go. You could leave him here, go down to the nearest empty room and cry your eyes out. You don't have to-
Fuck it. Fuck what the voice in her head thinks, fuck what Tim sees, fuck holding back from the rewinds because of some- some godddamn moral dilemma that won't even matter in the long run. Who the hell cares- who the fuck will remember all this bullshit anyway?
Her defenses crash down as she sits heavily, hiding her face- but there's nothing she can do to hide the shake of her shoulders, the ragged unevenness of her sobbing breaths as she reaches for air, as she stains her sleeves with tears. She grips the fabric of her jeans, painfully, as though for support, as though in anger- her knuckles white with the forcefulness of the gesture. Strained, low moans from behind clenched teeth punctuate her crying, a desperate and furious sound.
Hey, it's... it's okay, a soft voice gently whispers from somewhere.
She doubts she'd even have made it to the stairs, anyway. She can't even bring herself to worry about Tim all that much- her thoughts are too caught up in an image of Chloe lying dead on a bathroom floor, in memories of their short-lived time in Wonderland and all the things neither of them will remember, in the promises they made to never leave each other. In the loneliness that followed. In the words your fault.
no subject
She breaks down utterly, sits where she is, and starts to sob. And he - god, he's starting to pick up on what Jay must've felt every time something like this happened, when Tim began to crack and crumble and shake and he was left standing there filming it all like an idiot, offering no comfort, no words, nothing.
He can do better than Jay, can't he?
He can do - slightly better, maybe. Drop into a crouch, slow and careful, across from her, the butt of his cigarette trailing wisps of gray into the cold.
"I don't know what happened," he says slowly, carefully, "not back home. But Alex - I can tell you that none of that was your fault. None of what he did, whatever it was - none of that was on you."
And how do you know that, huh?
Because it's all squarely on Tim.
1/2
But what really bothers her, crying on the roof, pulling her legs into a tighter hug- what really bothers her is Chloe.
Leaving Chloe for five years without a call or text. Spending a month at Blackwell without reaching out. Then only having one week, and hating, hating that it was so short... and thinking about all the things she could've done to make things better. Just, something, anything- Anyone else, if they'd had the power to rewind time- the things they could've done- And yet, in Wonderland, people do so much with less, with nothing but guts and brains and- And the failure of it stings so bad, burns, aches- With the loss on top of it all, the time they lost, they could've had- Time Max threw away- The morning that Chloe was just gone and Max never said goodbye, and they promised all the time but never did anything- The dates, the relationship they'd never have in the real world, the affection and love-
And she's just so lonely. Just so hurt.
The worst of the crying starts to pass a little after Tim's words of comfort. Eventually her shudders and sobs are reduced to a quiet sniffling, a slow inhale and exhale of breath. Calming down.
She stands shakily, stepping away from him.
"S-sorry, Tim, but... but I think I sh-should rewind that-" she says, lifting a hand. And no matter his reply time starts to bend back, the roaring of wind filling Max's ears, spiraling-
2/2
But this time, she doesn't start to lose control. This time she looks at him apologeticaly, her eyes red and puffy, her sleeves stained.
"I'm- Th-thanks Tim. I know this is... is weird and, and you probably didn't want to come up here, b-but, thanks. I had... a good smoke."
no subject
Her sleeves are stained with blood and her tears and she looks goddamn miserable, but hey -
Hey.
At least they had a good smoke.
"I know I'm not really your favorite guy in the world," he says, dryly, because ironic remarks lighten the mood for sure, right? Not like he's familiar with any other tactic. "But I don't...I don't hold that against you."
Why would he hold common fucking sense against anyone?
no subject
Yeah. It was... good. In a way.
Didn't really resolve anything, but. But there wasn't any suffocating sympathy or anything like that.
She sighs heavily, then bends down to pick up the cigarette but she put out earlier. Yeah, she- she shouldn't litter that, right? She has no idea where to put it so she stuffs it back into the pack, to be thrown away later.
The truth is she's just trying to find something to do other than talk. Other than think about how ridiculous she must have looked in the alternate timeline. Embarrassed- though she knows he won't realize why.
"Okay, uhh... I should. I dunno. I should go." She turns to the door leading off the roof and pauses, her hand on the handle. But then she faces him again. "You heading down, too?"
no subject
Not all that surprising. For the best if she just heads off and does...whatever it is she does. If nothing else, this talk confirmed one thing - she can time travel, and she's not happy that he knows about it.
And he can't change that, much as he kinda wishes he could.
"Yeah," he says, only after a moment's contemplation. After the shit he gave her for wanting to stand alone on a roof, he'd be kind of a hypocrite to do the same for himself, right?
Never mind that "hypocrisy" might as well be second nature, for him.
"Yeah, I'll head down."
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(no subject)
The comment didn't post sigh
lmao nice one dw
(no subject)